DW S604 The Doctor's Wife & S605 The Rebel Flesh

[crabby_lioness]

Sorry folks, it's been a busy week and I never found the time to post this first one.

The Doctor's Wife

*big goofy grin*

Called it.  *checks date*  Almost four years ago to the day I posted a fanfic about the TARDIS being a communication-impaired Goddess who stole away with a Time Lord.  Not that I'm saying Neil Gaiman stole the idea from me, or even that no one else had had it beforehand.  Some ideas are simply too beautiful not to be true.  It was wonderful to see what an expert writer could do with the notion.

Lovely story.  Bittersweet, in the way that most NuWho has been.  More sweet that bitter, in the way that most Moffet-Who has been.  One could play a great game of "spot the Classic Who and Big Finish references" with this episode, and I'm sure someone else has already posted that.   I loved the way the Doctor and the TARDIS bickered like an old married couple.

And yes Rory, of course the Doctor has a room.  But it's lonely there, and sometimes fills up with ghosts.  It's much nicer to stay in her room.

The Rebel Flesh

Last night we watched Men in Black, a very clever ripoff of a whole bunch of earlier works.  It's like The Rebel Flesh only not, because while The Rebel Flesh also rips off a whole bunch of earlier works it's not the least bit clever.

For starters there's a helluva lot of Star Trek in this episode.  The structure is the same one used for most of the C-level plots from Star Trek Classic:  there's a threat to the dilithium crystals TARDIS that is coincidentally concurrent with one or more otherwise minor problems that the crew have to attend to nearby blowing the danger level all out of proportion because the writer couldn't be arsed to come up with a decent storyline.  The antagonists look exactly like and have similar abilities to  the sheriff from Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine;  Odo, was that his name?  And then there's the whole, "The monster isn't really a monster; it's just that some stupid humans are where they are not supposed to be, doing something they shouldn't be doing without either finding out what's really going on or obtaining permission" trope that was first done and best done in Star Trek's genuine classic episode The Devil in the Dark.  (Seriously you need to watch that one even if you never watch another episode in your life.  It's one of two Star Trek Classic episodes that out-Doctor Who Doctor Who.)

The WTF-ness of this episode reaches epic proportions.  How come mere solar flares were able to upset the TARDIS?  What was that acid they were mining?  Why didn't the Doctor tell them, "That's a Sontaran clone tank; the creatures that come out of it are sentient, sapient, and intelligent."?  There were some nice character moments and the acting was top-notch, but there's no excuse for doing a plot like this in 2011.  It's understandable to tell a bad story while trying something new, but telling a bad story that follows a  45 year old formula for bad stories is asking to be mocked.

Comments

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

Well of course. My point is, why re-use a bad trope that people have been holding up as an example of bad genre writing for 40 years? I remember reading essays dissecting the C-level multiple meaningless threats tropes from Star Trek back in the 70s, complete with the writers begging people never to use it again. I couldn't believe that a show as good as this would resort to something that substandard.

[wight1984.livejournal.com]

The fact that people enjoy this kind of plot structure seems a good reason to not give up on it entirely.

It would be a bit tedious if it was every episode but I personally didn't find it problematic here. I enjoyed the episode, so did many others.

Can't please everyone of course and if you restricted yourself only to plot structures that pleased everyone then you'd just have to give up making television.

The idea of having two or more independent plot lines in one show really doesn't bother me. They've crafted the story in such a way that both plot lines make sense in light of the setting, so that's all good. The idea that it's a fundamentally bad idea strikes me as just wrong.

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

You can make two or more independent plots work when they're real independent plots. These were just more coincidentally concurrent problems piled on top of each other to up what was basically a non-existent threat. That's annoying.

While the Knight Errant format is built on a framework of coincidence (your Knight just happens to be in town when something interesting happens) there's a maximum limit to the number of coincidences that can occur within the same show before the audience starts laughing at it. This show was way over that number.

[wight1984.livejournal.com]

In plot terms, the three things are obviously separate. The Doctor arrives, the gangers go walk about and the acid starts leaking. The setting however provides a single cause for all three, the storm.

It's not coincidence as written. The three plot elements were tied together quite nicely I'd say.

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

Sorry, the setup still relies on a convergence of coincidence that's not held together well. What's the acid doing there in the first place? Why do the flares effect the TARDIS? It stretches the suspension of disbelief a bit too thin.

[wight1984.livejournal.com]

That's not really 'coincidence'. Coincidence is when two events happen together that relate to one another without a common cause.

The plot lines in Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist are heavily coincidental for instance; there are lots of separate plot lines that aren't really related that all merge together to create the final outcome despite there being no reason to believe they should (no external controlling factor is introduced to explain the coincidence).

The concept of an 'acid mine' certainly doesn't sound particularly plausible to my ears but that's a different complaint to it being too coincidental.

Similarly, the logic of what does and doesn't affect the Tardis is pretty clearly a case of 'whatever the writers have decided on this episode' and that could be fairly criticised but, again, nothing to do with the concept of coincidence.

I don't really care about the latter because the Tardis is a sci-fi creation that never had firm rules anyway, so it's hard to complain about inconsistency. The idea of what is presumably some kind of natural deposit of some highly corrosive substance does strain my disbelief a bit, although I guess it could result from some future Earth event.

So, yeah, little dubious but no reason to criticise shows that have multiple plot lines.

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

You don't appear to be reading my posts. I don't object to multiple plot lines per se; I often adore stories with multiple plot lines including those of Dickens. I dislike multiple bad plotlines being used to prop each other up because none of them present a credible threat by themselves.

[wight1984.livejournal.com]

Why?

If one plot line was serious enough to carry the story, there would be no need for any others.

If you're going to have multiple plot lines then they all ought to contribute to the story without dominating it. Seems fair enough to me.

It's still not coincidence either way, which was at least part of your complaint.

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

If one plot line was serious enough to carry the story, there would be no need for any others.

EXACTLY. Now you're geting it. If one threat were serious enough to carry the story, the other plots could contribute to the story in other ways without causing a "nibbled to death by ducks" phenomenon.

[wight1984.livejournal.com]

That doesn't imply that multiple plot lines are a bad thing.

If you had one plot line that does all the work then the others are just wasting space and should be scrapped. If you want to have multiple plot lines and events going on, they all need to take a share of the burden of carrying the episode.

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

*bangs head against wall*

I said one plot should be enough to carry the threat. That doesn't mean that the other plots are wasting space.

Take Blink for example. That was a story with multiple plots, but only one plot was a threat to life and limb. The plot with the Stone Angels was plenty threatening all by itself. But there were other plots concerning Sally's relationships with her friend and the two men in the story. Those plots didn't involve overt threats but they were hardly things that were "just wasting space and should be scrapped" and they did "take a share of the burden of carrying the episode."

This story would have been much better if it were tighter written and had just one plot carrying the threat instead of having to waste time explaining why three different things added up to a threat. That way there would have been more time could have been spent dealing with the Gangers and their ramifications.

[wight1984.livejournal.com]

"I said one plot should be enough to carry the threat."

Which you've yet to justify in any other way than 'Star Trek already did it'.

"Take Blink for example. That was a story with multiple plots, but only one plot was a threat to life and limb. The plot with the Stone Angels was plenty threatening all by itself. But there were other plots concerning Sally's relationships with her friend and the two men in the story. Those plots didn't involve overt threats but they were hardly things that were "just wasting space and should be scrapped" and they did "take a share of the burden of carrying the episode.""

Blink had extra sub-plots but that's not really the point. I'm talking about the main structure of an episode.

"This story would have been much better if it were tighter written and had just one plot carrying the threat instead of having to waste time explaining why three different things added up to a threat. That way there would have been more time could have been spent dealing with the Gangers and their ramifications."

I really don't see how any of this has taken anything away.

We get one simply event, a storm, that forces the Doctor to land on an acid mine. The storm creates the gangers and reptures the acid, the latter of which makes the Tardis inaccessible and makes movement harder around the mine.

That's not complicated stuff that bogs anything down. In fact, the acid issue barely does anything other than make for a tidy excuse as to why the Tardis is not available.

It's not really that dissimilar than when the Tardis goes missing in Fires of Pompei, except that was an actual coincidence (as there was no particular reason for that event to have happened at the same time as the eruption apart from chance). The Tardis being stolen and sold is just a little excuse to keep the Doctor out of the Tardis until he can be dragged into the story.

Same here, the acid just takes away the obvious escape route and forces The Doctor to stick about and not make use of any easy solutions.

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

I used Star Trek as an example because I assume most people are familiar with it and most fans are familiar with it's essays analyzing the structures of genre fiction. There are probably similar essays analyzing the structures of DW plots, but I'm in America and I haven't read all of those.

I could get out my books of literary analysis and quote from the Masters on why a sloppy plot is a no-good very-bad idea, but I'm in mid-move and most of my library is not accessible. So I thought everyone would recognize Star Trek. Apparently I made a mistake there.

[wight1984.livejournal.com]

The statement 'a sloppy plot is a no-good very-bad idea' appears to be begging the question. Obviously a 'sloppy' plot isn't a good one.

The issue is whether or not having the event that triggered the main event also trigger a separate event that renders the Tardis unavailable is bad writing.

Personally, I see it as being wrapped up very nicely. The reason I think this is precisely because it avoids the Tardis being unavailable for reasons of coincidence.

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

When you're talking about short, episodic fiction that has to be wrapped up in a given time frame, a sloppy plot is a really bad idea. The more time that has to be spent explaining the threat, the less time you have for everything else. 45 minute scripts need tight plots.

[wight1984.livejournal.com]

Again, the claim 'sloppy plots are a bad idea' doesn't add anything because it's tautological.

I don't think any persuasive critique of the episode can rest on such claims. It's merely begging the question.

The issue is whether having the event that causes the main plot line also create a small plotline/event that disables the Tardis is 'sloppy'. I don't think it is.

[sueworld2003.livejournal.com]

Nice points. Well said. :)

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

Thank you. :)

[farsh-nuke.livejournal.com]

Just like to point out that Doctor who is over 47 years old and thus it started the scifi tropes, not star trek, and that's if we ignore that most tropes existed beforehand anyway

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

I don't care who started it as long as I never have to see it again in a halfway decent show. Some tropes should be shot on sight.